How a Long-Term Cover Crop Cultivation Impacts Soil Phosphorus Availability in a No-Tillage System?

Abstract

The growth of cover crops can contribute to the increase in phosphorus content at depth by root decomposition. The aim of this work was to verify the effect of cover crops on soil phosphorus availability and use by successive plants, and the accumulation of soil P in a no-tillage system conducted for 14 years. This research was carried out during the 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 crop seasons, whose treatments have been installed and maintained since 2003. The experimental design was a randomized block design, and the plots consisted of spring crops: pearl millet, forage sorghum, sunn hemp, and additionally, a fallow/chiseling area. The evaluation of available P was determined by P fractionation. In general, in the two years of evaluation, the accumulation of P in the shoot dry matter was higher in sunn hemp growth, on average 25% higher than pearl millet in 2016 and 40% higher than sorghum in 2017. The highest contents of labile inorganic P were in the sorghum–soybean and fallow/chiseling–soybean successions, with values higher than 50 mg kg−1 of P in the 0–0.1 m soil layer. However, in the other layers analyzed, the cover crops obtained higher availability of labile inorganic P. The systems using cover crops recovered 100% of the P fertilized in soybean.